My mother asked whether I was married to the nice man sitting beside me

Dear Delyara, My mother has dementia. My husband and I visited her today, and halfway through tea she looked at him, then at me, and asked, “Are you married to this nice man?” We have been married twenty-seven years. Mum attended our wedding. She once disliked him so much she did not speak to me for three months after we got engaged. Today, she had no memory of any of that. I said yes. She smiled and told me, “Good choice.” My husband laughed. I did too, then had to go into the hallway because I could not stop crying. For years I wanted Mum to approve of him. Eventually she did, slowly, grudgingly, through grandchildren and Christmas dinners and him fixing things in her house without being asked. Now she has arrived at wholehearted approval by forgetting the entire history. On the drive home, my husband said, “Took me twenty-seven years, but I won her over.” He was joking. I held his hand. Dementia keeps giving us these gifts with knives hidden inside them. My mother finally looked at my husband without any old resentment. She also looked at our marriage as though it had begun that afternoon.